


Black and Blue and Red All Over

by Headfulloffantasies



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Heroes, Heroes of New York, New York, Spider-Man - Freeform, Winter Soldier - Freeform, meet-not-cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22459069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Headfulloffantasies/pseuds/Headfulloffantasies
Summary: Bucky follows the kid around. He's not stalking. He's protecting.
Kudos: 41





	Black and Blue and Red All Over

Bucky watched the kid. Spidey bounced around the city, swinging passed in his outlandish suit. On the ground, Spider-Man mania gripped New York. Everybody loved their webslinger, with a few key exceptions. A hero with that much attention needed watching. So Bucky watched. And he learned.

Spidey knew people’s names. He was seen. He interacted. Bucky watched as the kid waved to a bodega owner, swinging onto an electrical pole and stopping to chat. He knew these people. 

Spider-man belonged to the people. Steve tried that, but the image of Captain America the War Hero loomed too strong to break through most people’s perceptions. Captain America existed as a character like Mickey Mouse. All folks wanted from him on the street was a photo. 

The suit bugged Bucky. The skinny kid with his floppy limbs and elastic spine couldn’t hide with his fire engine red and TARDIS blue onesie. Captain Marvel might have a similar colour scheme, but no one knew of a being on the entire planet that could lay a hand on her. Her suit was a warning. Spidey’s was an invitation. 

If he was smarter, Spidey would adopt Natasha and Bucky’s style: all black and kevlar. The kid didn’t have bullet proof abilities. Bucky had seen the panic through the mask from a sniper’s rooftop when a machine gun suddenly introduced itself to a simple mugging. A graze had Bucky up and ready to jump in, but the kid had it under control. He leaped over his opponent’s head, webbed the gun’s muzzle, and had both the thugs down and out before Bucky could make it to the stairs. 

So, the kid was good. But that didn’t excuse his brazen mannerisms. He taunted his villains. 

“Hey, Shocker, what’s wrong with your face? Did you run into a brick wall, or were you always that ugly?”

Ok, so the kid wasn’t Wordsworth when it came to insults. But Bucky saw the play. Spidey’s motor mouth kept his opponents distracted, or angry, or just plain baffled. 

Why didn’t he keep his head down? Spidey called attention to himself. He didn’t hide. Bucky started to wonder if the kid liked the attention. Maybe he was a glory hound. 

Bucky walked down the street when he noticed the kid starting off his day. Four o’clock, every afternoon like clockwork. Bucky glanced up at the building the kid had leaped from. A buzz of curiosity and mild paranoia tingled behind his eyes. Bucky checked no one was watching and made for the fire escape. 

Wind buffeted the top of the building. New York spread out below and above, a full spectrum of humanity in the honking horns, shouts, and bass lines. Bucky checked out the rooftop. There wasn’t much to see, just a water tower and a roof access door. On the far side of the water tower Bucky found a backpack webbed to the structure. 

He stood still while his options warred inside. His fingers itched to open the bag and find out exactly who lived under the Spider-Man mask. But the breach of trust was monumental. Heroes went to war for less. Iron Fist and Johnny Storm still weren’t talking. 

In his deliberation Bucky didn’t hear the light footfalls behind him.

“Are you following me, Mr. Barnes?” 

Bucky aborted two very catastrophic reactions to the demon child sneaking up on him. First, he stopped the gut reaction to pull out a weapon and shoot. Second, he just barely kept himself from leaping out of his skin and falling off the edge of the building. 

The white eyes of the kid’s suit blinked. Bucky stared him down.

“Are you following me?” The kid repeated. 

“No,” Bucky weighed his options and decided lying was the better of two evils. Heroes were suspicious creatures by nature. And Bucky was a bastard by nature.

“It’s okay if you are,” Spidey parked his butt on the edge of the building with his feet dangling into nothing. “I just want to know why.”

“I’m not following you,” Bucky decided to die on this hill. It was a nice hill and he had died for less.

“Did Miss Romanoff ask you to look out for me? Because I told her I’m fine.”

“No,” Bucky said, squinting at the kid. “You talked to Nat?”

The kid nodded. “I found her cat in a tree. She threatened to break my knee caps.”

Bucky huffed a laugh. Natasha protected her cat more than her teammates. On a whim, he sat next to the kid, though he kept his feet solidly on the rooftop, thank you very much.

The kid watched him out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t care that you’re following me, Mr. Barnes. I kind of like having the back up. But if you want something from me, you should just ask.”

The flippancy with his own privacy set Bucky’s teeth on edge. People these days freely surrendered their information in the belief that it somehow made them safer. Hydra had been right about that much. For someone like Spidey, though, information was dangerous. Bucky’s skin crawled to think what Hydra could do with the little intel that Bucky had garnered in the last week.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Barnes?”

The kid was so polite, so adorable. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

Bucky hid the grin bubbling up. Trust Spidey to make a joke with the Winter Soldier.

“Why do you wear red and blue?”

“Why do you wear black?”

“Stealth,” Bucky answered with a smirk. “And habit.”

Spidey nodded. He kicked his feet, staring out at the New York skyline. “Why do you think I wear red and blue?”

Bucky shrugged, “Favourite colours?”

Bucky could see the frown through the mask. “I’m being serious.”

“Okay,” Bucky surrendered. He took a second to order his thoughts. “I used to think you did it to be seen. So everyone would look up and say “There goes Spider-Man”. Now I don’t know.”

Spidey nodded. “You’re half right. I picked bright colours to be seen. By the bad guys. I want all their focus on me, not their victims.”  
Noble. Bucky didn’t expect anything less after (not) following him.

“And the mask?” Bucky prodded.

“It’s complicated. I have people I’ve got to protect. And I feel… safe in the mask. No one sees my face, no one sees how scared I am.”

Bucky nodded, turning to watch the city with Spidey. The pieces slotted into place. He didn’t have to ask about the jokes, or the webs, or the weird familiarity Spider-Man cultivated with his neighbors. It all boiled down to that: I want to help. I am afraid. Bucky got that.

“Do you ever get scared, Mr. Barnes?”

“All the time,” Bucky admitted. 

“What do you do when you’re scared?”

Bucky sighed. “I don’t know anymore. It used to be that whatever I faced, what I had to go back to if I failed was worse. Now,” he shrugged. “Now I can’t let go of what I’ve got. I fought tooth and nail to hold on to the people I have. And I’d rather die than give them up.”

“Me too,” Spidey said quietly. He reached up, and to Bucky’s amazement, Spidey pulled off his mask.

Bucky almost had a heart attack. The kid was puny. A literal, baby faced child. Brown curls and wide eyes, and a smile like a puppy dog. Oh god, protect him. Who let this infant out into the world to get beat up by bad guys every night?

“Hi, I’m Peter,” Spidey extended a hand.

Bucky carefully took Peter’s fingers in his. “Call me Bucky.”

“Are you going to stop following me now?”

“Not a chance.”

**Author's Note:**

> I keep telling myself I don't really like Spider-man, but I keep coming back to him as a character study. I guess I'm more fascinated with Peter Parker than I like to admit.


End file.
